I’ve been reading a lot of e-books lately. As a bibliophile, I generally prefer print on paper books, but since I’m a bibliophile for the stories, not the containers, I find it hard to pass up free e-books or really cheap ones. Something I’m learning is that there are a lot of self published e-books and that means writing quality ranges from “very good” to “really bad.” Books that have gone through an editor and publisher rarely get lower than “not good.”

I’ve also discovered that I downloaded a lot of romance novels at some point. Romance is probably the only genre I really don’t care for, so I must have gotten these for my mom, who loved them. I’ve read a couple of those. I’m not sure why knowing (s)he’s “the one” on first meeting annoys me in romance stories, since that’s literally what happened to me forty-nine years ago. Maybe because it seems to be so rare in the world around me. Maybe because what’s being described is so often much more lust than love. Maybe because there’s so often way too much intimate detail that doesn’t really move the story along. I’m also not a fan of a ‘guaranteed’ happy ending. I like, even want , a happy ending, but also want the experience of not knowing until the end and I want the end to be “real,” not contrived to be happy. Sometimes “not happy” is the only natural result of all that’s transpired.

Most recently I picked up a romance for the second time, and couldn’t continue again. I understand that there is a certain formula one follows to write a particular genre, but it shouldn’t be obvious. From the little I read it was too obvious. But worse, I didn’t like any of the characters, good or bad. Everyone was to flat, or cardboard cut-out or rigidly stereotypical and the main character (heroine??) was wimpy and insecure to the point I found annoying. I assume she’ll develop some backbone by the end of the story, but I really don’t care. [Lucky by (don’t remember the author’s name)]

I’ve also read a few mystery romances. The one I liked best focused the least on the romance part. One was a paranormal mystery romance. The romance seemed too unlikely to me, but otherwise I did like that story. (It’s been a while and I remember neither titles nor authors–will add edit if I come across them.)

What I really like is a character driven story. Plot can be subtle or major. Good literary fiction seems actually to focus on well drawn characters, but any genre with good characterization is good–even romance.

Which brings me to the last two books I read (not romances).

It’s quite possible to have a really good story in a very poorly written book. I would categorize Going Big or Small?: Frank’s year of living dangerously in Europe, by David Canford (e-book), as an adventure and it was, but every time I think about it, I’m so disappointed, because the whole thing was told to the reader. I never felt like I was there, like it was happening to me. I never got to “know” any of the characters and was given only limited descriptions of most of them. (At least those descriptions were not stereotypes or cardboard cutouts.) I made little more than casual acquaintance with the main character, but that much only because he was telling the story. I never really got to know him.¹ Had it been truly well written, I would have experienced the adventure. If I’d also been able to get to know the characters better, it would have been a great read. As it is, I’d call it a frustrating read. It’s like a neighbor I barely know was telling me about his adventure.

I cannot really recommend this book, though I would not say not to bother. It’s a disappointment because it has so much potential, but I’m not unhappy to have read it, just disappointed.

A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline (hardcover) is pretty much all character. It’s fiction, but since it’s based on real people, she kept it as close to reality as possible. But no one can access the mind of another, so no matter how close to reality she kept, these are fictional characters. None-the-less, at the end of the book, I felt like I knew these people.

Apparently it was inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s painting Christina’s World and tells the story of Christina Olson’s life. It was not an easy life and the ending is a not story-book happy ending. Still, it is satisfying–because it feels real. That it jibes with reality may add to that, but even had every character been entirely made up, it still would have felt real. That’s because every person was shown as a real, multifaceted person. It wasn’t just a physical description and what they did, but also how they did what they did, which often shows WHY they did it, as much or more than their own explanation might. Christina, as narrator, also tells us about people, and for me, that tells me as much or more about Christina as whomever she’s talking about.

Anyway, I liked this book enough to read all 304 pages in one sitting (even with the TV blaring nonsense for just over an hour at the beginning). I unreservedly recommend it to anyone (age ~12 to 100+).

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¹ I picture him as a somewhat older Bradley Walsh, who plays Graham on Doctor Who, so I suppose he’s a bit like Graham.